The present invention relates to fishing accessories and, more particularly, to a portable fishing rod holder with legs and a stand.
According to the recreational boating and fishing foundation there are over 48 million anglers in the US alone who love to fish. By simply walking into a fishing store, one can see that rods and reels are not cheap, up to several hundred dollars in some instances. Handling fishing rods, especially multiple fishing rods, is not easy. Out on the water, they perform excellent, but getting there is a different story. Rods are designed perfectly for fishing, but not so much for transportation.
There is a good chance that an angler has to transport their rods and tackle to go fishing. For many people, that means carefully and constantly loading and unloading rods from vehicles and maneuvering constant obstacles such as hallways, doorways, garages, and docks, to name a few. Even if an angler is close to a fishing spot, there are still cases, where docks can stretch up to 50 yards or more.
While fishing rods are designed to have great downward pulling strength, their ceramic rings, rollers, tips, and expensive reels and not designed to take direct contact and can damage and break very easily. Most anglers have had to replace rings and broken rods all together and typical damage almost always happens during transportation.
The problem is that there are really only two ways to carry fishing rods, and both ways have inherent problems and regularly damage rods and reels. The first and most common way is to grab the rods down around the bottom handle or griping around the reel bracket, keeping the rods out in front, and the second way to grab fishing rods is from the top, around the guides where the rod is slim and flexible, keeping the rods vertical. What makes transporting rods difficult is the fact that they are so long, up to 7 feet or more in length, and their weight is unbalanced along their length, making it very difficult to find a comfortable handle while safely transporting them.
The first and most common method of carrying rods is by griping the bottom handle or around the reel, and it's somewhat comfortable but it puts the rod tips way out in front of you, about 5-6 feet or more. With the rods tips that far out in front, they are more likely to strike objects and break as you transport them. Not to mention that holding more than one or two rods like this becomes extremely difficult and uncomfortable.
The second method for carrying rods is by griping them high up around the top third of the rods where they are slim and you can carry more rods. The problem is that the expensive reels are left dangling below banging against each other and causing damage. Another problem with this method is scratching gimbals on the floor and then damaging tips as a result from holding rods too high indoors. Tangling lines and tackle are also always a danger with either of these carrying methods and that can lead to serious delays and time lost not fishing.
Therefore, one method holds from the bottom and the other method holds from the top, but both methods are flawed, because the ideal place to hold a rod from is the midsection. This would keep the rod tips closer to you and the gimbals high off the ground, the problem is that the natural design of fishing rods makes it almost impossible to comfortably and efficiently hold and transport a fishing rod from its midsection.
Conventional portable fishing rod holders on the market are designed to either carry the rods horizontally or vertically. These designs end up placing the rod tips too far out in front or too high up over the user, which can lead to broken rod tips and decreased maneuverability.
Other conventional designs are difficult to store, place reels too close to each other, and often do not offer any means to protect the rods when not in transport. Many of the conventional designs cannot carry larger rods with conventional reels that are very commonly used in most forms of fishing.
As can be seen, there is a need for an improved portable fishing rod holder having legs and a stand.